WASHINGTON -- A federal judge on Wednesday questioned whether a key component of the landmark Voting Rights Act is outdated, expressing skepticism about using evidence of racial discrimination from 40 or 50 years ago to justify continued election monitoring for a group of mostly Southern states.

"We're now looking at a situation where that information is at least 45 years out of date, and by the time the 2006 extension of the Voting Rights Act runs its course it will be 70 years," he said. "That wouldn't seem to be a current coverage formula, would it?"

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Presents Oral Argument in Defense of Section 5 of the VRA

(New York, NY) – Today the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) presented oral argument in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, a case challenging a core provision of the Voting Rights Act known as Section 5. The provision requires jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to have voting changes reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to ensure that they are nondiscriminatory.

WASHINGTON -- Lawyers for Shelby County asked a federal judge in Washington today to declare two key parts of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional because Congress relied on old voting statistics when it extended the historic civil rights law for another 25 years.

For black residents and their lawyers, diluting the strength of any one black voter is problematic.

"If there has been a discriminatory voting change, it is not absolved because there have been ten or one hundred non-discriminatory changes; the act of discrimination is still odious," wrote lawyers for the defendants who intervened in the case, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.